


the dark of death, the light of life

by EssayOfThoughts



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Eldritch/Cosmic Horror, Gen, Padmé comes back to life as an eldritch creature, The Force as an Eldritch Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-16
Updated: 2019-07-16
Packaged: 2020-06-29 14:22:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19832026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts
Summary: Padmé thinks she is not entirely Padmé any more. Her hands are light and shadow, her feet trail to nothingness. Her hair is long and dark as the stretch between stars, and is as speckled with them. When she swims by a sun, her hair fades off into wispy void, like wind or like ribbons of silk gone tattered at the ends.She does not think she is a Force Ghost: the Force had never touched her in life, and she had felt it seep away from herwithher life. Whatever she is now, recreated from the body left behind, the wound of her death, the purpose she had to save the Republic, to save her children, is something much else.





	the dark of death, the light of life

**Author's Note:**

  * For [saiditallbefore](https://archiveofourown.org/users/saiditallbefore/gifts).



> Look, I saw the tag "Padmé comes back to life as an eldritch creature" and was compelled to treat for you, saiditallbefore. What a tag. I hope you enjoy this.
> 
> ... Also know I feel like I could probably write more for this AU, but not for this exchange because it would get hilariously out of control way to quickly.

Padmé wakes, and knows she wakes from death. There is a cold within her, from the core of her heart to the tips of her fingers and toes, and when she rises pale stars fall from the shadow of her hair - gifts, she realises, from those who loved her.

She rises, and she does not rise, for something of her stays lain below in an echo and effigy of her form, but she, Padmé, the Force-drained essence of a woman, a politician, a mother, she rises even without a true life to give her breath.

Far in the distance, she sees Naboo. She sees Theed. She sees people. She wonders for a moment that she can see… everyone, if she but looks, vague shapes that she simply  _ reaches _ for and can grasp. She is maybe a mile out from shore, where she floats and where she hovers, but the darkness reaches everywhere, and the lights illuminate in distant specks and that is Padmé now: the vast shadow of her hair, the soft starry flecks of flowers in its vast expanse.

No one, it seems, can see her, made of shadow and stars as she is.

She spins and looks around. Ani has betrayed her, betrayed the Order, betrayed the Republic. She sees no sign of him here. She drops her hands to her belly, but she hardly has hands now, hardly has a belly, just a stretching expanse, fingers that turn to nothing, a twisting lithe form like a shadow at noonday trying to duck from the sun. Still she grasps at the lingering echoes of her old form, still she hopes, and when she tries to  _ reach _ for her children, the bodies she had carried for nine months and knew like her own…

She feels nothing.

Padmé, an empty Force-dry echo, cries out in the vast and empty space, and she  _ seeks. _

* * *

She goes to Tatooine first. She does not know entirely how, just that she thinks of where she wishes to go, thinks of the dark between the stars and the light of the stars, thinks of Tatooine's three moons and she  _ flies. _ She wonders if this is the Force - drained of life as she was, drained of the Force’s all-encompassing energy, she wonders if this is the Force’s apology to her, for letting another take it from her so simply.

She doesn’t know. The Force and all its mysteries were never her wheelhouse; that was politics and the foibles of people and it is the foibles of people that lead her to Tatooine now. Obi-Wan had been there, when Ani had left. Obi-Wan knew that no one, not even Ani, would think to return after Shmi’s death. Obi-Wan, his presence, lingers in the sand and dust of the planet. Padmé flies, and when she reaches Tatooine, reaches Anakin’s mother’s home, reaches  _ her son _ , she finds him in loving arms, burbling and cared for.

Obi-Wan is not there. Lars and Beru, whom she knows only fleetingly, are. 

“Protect him,” she whispers, but they cannot hear, cannot hear her, the Force-made echo of the voice of a Force-drained woman, not when she speaks so softly. “Protect him,” she says again, louder and clearer, because no matter where Ani is, no matter where Palpatine, ever whispering secrets to make himself emperor is, she knows her son will be sought.

He sings so much with Force he almost glows, light and bright and absolute, as clear as the starflowers in her hair.

She reaches for him, ghostly fingers invisible to Lars and Beru, but not, it seems, to him, because he burbles and he laughs, and when she sets her fingers on his brow, murmuring an old Naboo blessing, he tries to grab for them.

“Stay safe,” she whispers to him, and ascends once more into the stars.

* * *

She had a daughter too. She does not know where her daughter lies. 

It takes her longer to find Leia than Luke, far longer. She does not dare swim through space to Coruscant, not now Palpatine, the Emperor, dark stinking nest of anger and hate and selfishness, seethes in its cityscape. She cannot go to the temple. She dares not go back to Naboo, her birthplace and the Emperor’s, the place of her burial. She does not think even Obi-Wan would chance keeping Leia there, and suspects she’d have sensed her daughter before she left if he had. 

Padmé rises. Padmé flies. 

Padmé thinks she is not entirely Padmé any more. Her hands are light and shadow, her feet trail to nothingness. Her hair is long and dark as the stretch between stars, and is as speckled with them. When she swims by a sun, her hair fades off into wispy void, like wind or like ribbons of silk gone tattered at the ends. 

She does not think she is a Force Ghost: the Force had never touched her in life, and she had felt it seep away from her  _ with _ her life. Whatever she is now, recreated from the body left behind, the wound of her death, the purpose she had to save the Republic, to save her children, is something much else.

Padmé, strange drifting echo of a Force-drained woman, tries to reach to the Force that has given her this unlife.

_ My daughter, _ she begs of it.  _ Please. She is  _ **_mine._ **

The Force answers.

* * *

Space tears around her and space twists, and it is the shadows between stars and the speckling stars of space, and it grasps her, wraps her round, changes her form to something still more inhuman and when she lands in the orbit of Alderaan her hair is dark shadowed tendrils and the star-specks in amongst it open and close like waiting mouths, licking against the pale glow of her skin and tucking against the dark shadow of her gown.

She descends, slowly, towards the palace of Bail and Breha.

* * *

Breha, she thinks, can see her.

“Padmé,” she whispers when she sees her reaching over her crib. “Is that- oh Stars, Padmé, what  _ happened  _ to you?”

They, like everyone else, think her dead. Perhaps she is. She does not think she is alive anymore, and certainly she is not human. She stretches a hand to her daughter, though, and Leia burbles just as Luke did, and reaches back. Fat fingers grip her own nigh-intangible ones and she sighs and leans her head to her daughter’s. 

The tendrils of her hair reach out, star-mouths pressing soft kisses to Leia’s skin. 

“I don’t know,” she says when she rises. Her hand stays gripped by Leia’s. “But I am here now. I will fight now.” She smiles, a lick of shadow and sunshine across the moon-like disc of her face. “No one will suspect the dead to fight.”

* * *

“We have you,” Mon says. “Padmé Amidala, Padmé Naberrie, back from the dead-”

“And hardly looking like herself,” Bail says. “The Emperor will call it a trick and plenty will believe it. Besides, we only saw her by chance. That everyone here can see her is because we believe in the Force. Because we trusted in Padmé. What of those who cannot see? Who do not believe?”

They look around at everyone else they have gathered, so many skin colours, so many forms, but none like Padmé’s warping dangerous thing, tendrils of tar-dark hair with open-closing mouths like stars, a face as pale as the moon and eyes as dark as night, a gown and fingertips that seem to fuzz off into nothingness where she floats between them all.

“Then do not have them believe it.” Her voice echoes in the room, sings in the space between skull and tissue, something unheard and unseen and yet utterly known. She smiles, a slice of shadow and sunshine across her face. “I have a daughter. I have a son. They are strong in the Force.” She smiles wider, something somehow more human for all her mouth almost rings her skull round. “They  _ shine. _ Let them be taught. Let them teach others. Let the light rise against the dark.”

* * *

They listen. Padmé wonders if they would have listened if she had been but human still, or if they only listen to her as she is now because they do not know  _ what _ she is now, some being half an echo of the woman who died and half remade and reconstructed and reconstituted by the very Force she was drained of. 

Luke and Beru and Lars are taken to Alderaan - are  _ brought. _ Padmé loops herself around Breha and Bail, sings a spear of thought and want out into the Force and the world around them and twists and turns and  _ tears _ and they land on the sandy plains of Tatooine in moments. 

“They could not see me,” she says. “Or hear me. But they are here, and they know where Obi-Wan is.”

“There is a risk to gathering,” Bail reminds her. “Are you certain?”

There is a risk, yes. The weft and warp of the Force will shift around them, around Obi-Wan and Leia and Luke, strong in the Force and able to tug at its weave.

But Padmé will be there with them too, Force and Forceless at once, and so she knows, “I can protect you.”

She wraps them round, once Bail and Breha convince Lars and Beru, and when she sings her spear of thought and want to the Force it pulls them through to Alderaan in an instant. Luke and Leia will be playmates, siblings, and train under Padmé’s tutelage and Obi-Wan’s, and she dots her children’s foreheads with the kisses of her star-mouthed tendrils.

“We will train them,” she says, and she makes it a proclamation, singing out into the Force that gifted her this state of being in apology for being torn from her to her death. “I will protect them. And together, all of us together, and the Force as well, we will end Palpatine’s empire.”

They do not question it. Held in the scoping shadows of her arms, gripped by intangible light and dark, her children laugh.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave comments!


End file.
